Often, customers or other end users who encounter difficulties when trying to solve problems send electronic mail (email) messages to an email response management system (ERMS). For example, if a customer has a problem installing or troubleshooting a home alarm system, the customer may send an email message to an ERMS for the home alarm service center. The customer may include within the email message a description of the type of alarm system being used and the details of the problem encountered. The customer may address the email message to a general address for the service center, such as “help@company.com”.
Over the course of a given day, the ERMS described above may receive hundreds of email messages from different customers requesting assistance. These email messages may all be addressed to the general address of “help@company.com”. The types of alarm systems and problems encountered described in these email messages, however, may vary greatly. As such, the ERMS typically processes these incoming email messages to identify the users who have sent the messages and to analyze the content of these messages. In some scenarios, the ERMS may have the ability to automatically provide acknowledgments to incoming messages. For example, the ERMS may send email messages to the customers to acknowledge receipt of the original messages sent by these customers.
To further process incoming email messages, the ERMS typically must assign the messages to response agents or experts who can review the descriptions contained in the messages and solve the identified problems. The ERMS may use a rule-based engine to identify agents or experts based upon content analyses of incoming messages. In some instances, it may take a certain period of time before the rule-based engine is able to assign incoming email messages to agents or experts within the ERMS.